Brin Defends Google Books, Talks Unicorns

Google co-founder Sergey Brin took to the op-ed pages Friday to defend his company's book-scanning project, dismissing the idea that Google is creating a monopoly in digital books and framing the effort as a necessary preservation effort.

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Google co-founder Sergey Brin took to the New York Times op-ed pages Friday to defend his company's book-scanning project, dismissing the idea that Google is creating a monopoly in digital books, and framing the effort as a necessary preservation effort.

"The famous library at Alexandria burned three times, in 48 B.C., A.D. 273 and A.D. 640, as did the Library of Congress, where a fire in 1851 destroyed two-thirds of the collection," Brin wrote. "I hope such destruction never happens again, but history would suggest otherwise."

Books written before 1923 are in the public domain, but those published later "disappear into a literary black hole," Brin said. Digitizing books, he argued, will ensure that these works will still be accessible even in the event of a flood, fire, age, or loss. This aspect of the argument, however, is where most people agree. Digital books = good. It's the copyright, competition, and financial issues that have mired the process.

Argument #1: Rights holders can at any time set pricing and access rights for their works or withdraw them from Google Books. Orphan works are given default pricing, giving rights holders an incentive to step forward and claim their cash. Under the terms of the deal, if an out-of-print copyright holder does not come forward within five years, any money earned from the sale of that work is used for registry upkeep and distributed among the registry's rights holders.

Rebuttal: When the Department of Justice reviewed the Google Book deal--and ultimately suggested that it not be approved as is--it argued that this structure creates a conflict between known and unknown rights holders. If the known rights holders are going to get the unknown rights holders' cash after five years, why would they want Google to track them down? The incentive for rights holders is "based on an untested hypothesis," DOJ said.

Argument #2: The Google Books deal "limits consumer choice in out-of-print books about as much as it limits consumer choice in unicorns," according Brin.

Rebuttal: Even detractors have argued that digitizing books is a worthwhile endeavor. It will provide access to books that might have otherwise deteriorated on some dusty library shelf. Opponents, however, are concerned that Google will be able to call the shots on how these books are handled once they're scanned into Google Books. David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, has said that Google will let any book retailer sell access to out-of-print books in the Google book registry.

Argument #3: Google Books will create competition, not block it. Somebody has to do it first. "If Google Books is successful, others will follow," Brin wrote.

Rebuttal: This might be true, but how exactly would anyone else go about doing this? At this point, the legality of Google Books is based on a settlement deal that came out of a class-action lawsuit. If a would-be competitor wants to get into the digital books field, should they too just start scanning books and hope that no one sues them, or hope that the resulting class-action suit results in a beneficial settlement? During a recent hearing on Capitol Hill, Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, asked Paul Misener, Amazon's vice president for global public policy, why Amazon didn't just go for it and start scanning books. Misener responded that "it would be incredibly irresponsible to actually seek out a class-action lawsuit against us."

What's next? In the wake of the DOJ's recommendations, a recent hearing on the settlement was delayed so that Google, book publishers, and authors could discuss possible changes. The next hearing is now scheduled for Nov. 9 in Manhattan federal court.

Chloe Albanesius has been with PCMag.com since April 2007, most recently as Executive Editor for News and Features. Prior to that, she worked for a year covering financial IT on Wall Street for Incisive Media. From 2002 to 2005, Chloe covered technology policy for The National Journal's Technology Daily in Washington, DC. She has held internships at NBC's Meet the Press, washingtonpost.com, the Tate Gallery press office in London, Roll Call, and Congressional Quarterly. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism from American University...
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